The Touchstone Trilogy (21 page)

The things they were fighting were like gargoyles.  Or bats with wolfish faces, all grey-skinned.  The sky above the mountainside was thick with them, and they dived like hawks, incredibly fast.  Ketzaren's Wind manipulation abilities were really useful there.  It's not the same kind of instant-hit that Lohn's Light wall is, but if she sets up enough movement in the air, it grows to cyclonic levels.  It made it incredibly hard for the gargoyles to fly, and funnelled them together really handily.

That space was huge, too.  It took almost an hour for First Squad to chase down all the gargoyles, and I noticed a few escaped through other gates, and that one of the things First Squad were trying to do was prevent that, although they wouldn't chase them through the gates.  It was also by far the worst time I'd had with First Squad, because there's no way slaughtering a couple of hundred animals could be anything but awful.  The Ionoth might just be memories, but they still don't want to be killed.  Being Setari is a really horrible job.

It was only when the very last of them was gone that First Squad said anything more than "There," or "To the left".  Maze called for a break, and we all sat down on some rocks and had a drink and some of the molasses-tasting food bars.  Using their powers takes an awful lot out of the Setari, especially over such a long period of time, and they were sweating and looking drained.  In a way it annoys me that it doesn't take me any effort to enhance them.  I'd feel less like a useless spectator if it at least made me tired.

"That was more than twice as many as the last time we did this space," Zee said, after drinking thirstily.

Maze nodded.  "I'll recommend reclassification of the rotation."

"Don't understand how ecology work here," I said.  "Do Ionoth need eat?  Or just attack people out habit?"

"It varies," Lohn said.  "In some spaces the Ionoth don't have any apparent food source, and we've never verified if they
have
to eat, but they often turn on each other or start to roam, preying on whatever they can find until separation from their home space causes them to fade.  There are others, roamers and static, which are not aggressive and don't have any interest in us at all.  If we do Boulders Rotation, you'll see the Tenders.  They 'notice' but never attack us, so we leave them be, as we do anything not classified as a threat."

"It's a big job keeping up with all the known types," Alay said.  "But a lot easier dealing with types already encountered than new varieties."

Maze called the end of the break then – they don't like to hang around in the spaces unnecessarily – and we went into the next space, which was a single short corridor with a couple of gates in it.  All the doors were outlines, showing only blackness.  and First Squad were really tense as they passed through it.  They said that they'd occasionally encountered very unusual Ionoth in there, but there was nothing this time.

Next was the reason it was called Lights Rotation.  It was a night time space with lots of huge overarching trees by a lake, and there were floating balls of light everywhere, about the size of two fists together.  It was the coldest space I've been in yet, and everyone's breath came out smoky.  The lake was black and mirror-still and reflected the glowing balls.  Maze had explained before we went through that there were usually only one or two creatures in this space, but that they were fast, and clever enough not to just jump out and be killed.  That was a rather nerve-wracking space, because after enhancing themselves, Lohn, Mara, Zee and Maze all disappeared off into the dark and Alay and Ketzaren and I waited by the gate.  I turned on the names in my interface again, but could only see where Maze and Zee had gone.  And then, while I was craning to see the others, Alay leaned forward and the chilly silence was ripped apart by a high vibrating sound, followed by a shrieking yowl accompanying a black shape falling out of one of the trees.  Alay has a sonic talent which seems to only be useful when she can take a few moments to build it and, importantly, none of her squad are anywhere near what she's trying to take down.

The last space was like a ghost town in a Western: old, falling apart, little more than the shells of buildings on a dusty plain.  In the middle of the town were square wooden frames, and tied to the squares with barbed wire were the shapes of people.  Black shadows with no features at all, like a person had had all their skin had burned away and then been covered in dusty ink.  They looked like they were in pain, being tortured like the shadows on the pyramids.  First Squad approached incredibly cautiously, scanning every building as we approached the frames, making sure nothing was lurking, and stopped at the edge of the central square with the frames.

"These are seen in a number of spaces," Alay said.  "Most notably on the Columns Rotation.  They are one of the most dangerous of the Ionoth, and frequently reach near-space and sometimes real-space."

One of the shadows reacted to the sound of her voice, eyes opening to slits.  And then a mouth appeared on the darkness of the face, out of nothing like the Cheshire Cat's does in Alice of Wonderland, but stretching up into the nastiest grin you could imagine.  It was all light inside, the shadows burning white within.  And what I'd thought was pain was a kind of exultation.

Then Maze set the entire thing burning, all the frames and the shadows on them.  He was still enhanced, and called down a pillar of flame in an absolute Wrath of God moment, shocking me.  First Squad, except for Mara who continued scanning the area for anything coming, all stood and watched in silence.  It was pretty clear they hated these things.

"Most monsters my world are people," I said, feeling inadequate.  "These memories of people?"

"Not anything I'd class as a person," Alay said, very firm and sharp for someone usually so quiet.  "Time to head back?"

Maze nodded, and we went back through the same set of spaces, with Ketzaren pausing at every gate and enhancing herself before locking them as much as possible.  Even though we'd just been through them all, First Squad stayed alert and ready for attack right up until we stepped back into real-space.

This time, an alert flashed in our mission display when we were being scanned.  "You've got a stickie, Zee," Maze said, and she groaned and walked away from us to a corner of the box.

"Stickie is?"  I asked.

"A very weak variety of Ionoth, but with an ability to conceal itself even from Sight talents.  They're parasites, feeding off human hosts.  When they're stronger, they can copy themselves to new hosts through physical contact, and–"

"Are a plaguish nuisance," Zee put in, arms crossed.

"If they're left too long, they begin to corrupt their hosts," Lohn added, grinning.

"They're removed using sonics," Maze continued, as if they hadn't interrupted, then gave Zee a sympathetic smile.  "Also known as an Instant Headache Treatment.  Hopefully the rest of us won't finish the day so uncomfortably."

We split up then.  After missions, showers and rest are very high on First Squad's list of things to do, and I guess Maze gets to file a mission report.  The rotations seem designed to last only a couple of hours, and there's never training or anything like that afterwards because it takes so much out of them.  I showered, ever-amused by my nanoliquid uniform, and then grabbed some 'portable food' from the canteen and went up to the roof.

It's still night, but it was very clear and not too windy and it was nice to sit and watch the stars.  I wasn't really surprised when Lohn and Mara showed up.  They take babysitting as seriously as they do killing Ionoth.

"What's the attraction?" Lohn asked, sprawling down next to me.  "Black, black, black and some stars?"

"The wind," I said, after thinking about it.  "And there insects here – they sound crickets – insects from home.  And temperature changes.  And different smells."

"Not many would consider these things positive," Lohn said.  "Besides, we had all that in Lights Rotation, didn't we?  Except perhaps this chirping."

"Too busy being nervous enjoy."

"You hide it well," Mara said.  "Maze wanted us to check how you're holding up to all this."

I like Mara for being very open about Stray mental health checks.  She's a really straightforward person.

"Is awful," I said.  "Killing things.  Spaces very interesting, Ionoth horrible.  Obvious."  I shrugged.  "But not overwhelm.  First Squad not scared.  Save panic for when First Squad is."

This made Lohn laugh.  "Worse philosophies, I suppose."

"One night Muina, most scared ever," I said.  "Been walk eleven days, sick eat bad fruit.  Sleep on hill under mat made leaves.  Something big walk up to me.  Foot came down mat, right next head.  Sniff me.  Lay there listen to it.  Then it go away.  Lots panic.  Watch very deadly Setari toast bugs easier."

They both shut up at that one, then Lohn slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed tight.  "You've a way of putting things in perspective.  But you'll let us know if there's anything troubling you?"

"Sure."  Since I'd succeeded in putting second level monitoring into perspective for myself as well, I thought about other things I could ask them, then said: "What Eighth Squad like?"

"Ah, you're due to do enhancement testing with them tomorrow, right?  Well, Kanato's solid, very level-headed.  Eighth is one of the 'big punch' squads, so we can expect some exciting damage to the test areas, I'd bet."

"Have decided long-term what do with me?"

"Too early.  There's a lot of debate, and some competing interests.  They won't have you actively working with the younger squads for quite a while, since having a talent set so increased and then reverting it might have a negative impact on them.  In theory we're too old and wise to have our heads turned as badly."  He laughed.  "I gather Seventh Squad is not very happy with Eighth for being selected to test with you."

I drew my knees up to my chin.  "Cloning legal Tare?" I asked carefully, and felt the depth of their silence.

"Cloning will not reproduce a talent set," Mara said eventually.  "Kolar tried it not long ago, and although there's some pattern similarity, it seems that there's more to talents than simple genetics.  Since they haven't found a way to make clones with an adequate lifespan, there's a ban on human cloning here."

But there'd obviously been 'a lot of debate' about quite a few things.

"Be really good way make me want be anywhere but here," I said softly.  "That good thing to add today's report."  And then, because I hated making First Squad feel bad, I added: "Six billion people my planet.  Bet Cass not only one enhance skill.  Hope they look harder for natural gate, get chance show First Squad my home."

Mara put a hand on my shoulder.  "We'll do that.  Besides, the real solution's the Pillars, not increasing our ability to kill Ionoth.  You can be sure we'll be throwing all our resources into taking advantage of the stroke of luck your visit home brought."

It isn't necessarily an endless war.  It's good to remember that. 

Monday, February 18

Eighth Squad

It's a weird feeling to have a group of strangers all eager for me to show up.  Or really eager to try out what their powers are like enhanced, anyway.

Eighth Squad is one of the Setari teams 'stacked' with high impact talents instead of being more all-round.  They're not usually used for spaces that require close fighting: there's apparently some spaces where you don't want to go in and make things explode because parts of the spaces explode right back.  Memories of oil refineries, perhaps.  And there's some Ionoth that you have to kill by hitting them because it's a bad idea using psionics on them.

Eighth's captain is Ro Kanato.  He tracked me down about half an hour before I was due to meet them, to introduce himself, show me the way to a new test room, and double-check my preferences for people grabbing hold of me.  He kept making references to the rules which had been set up regarding my 'handling'.  I'd love to be able to read these rules, and the reports and things filed about me, but though I've access to the public parts of the interface, there's an awfully large amount of the KOTIS network which I can't look at.  I'd like to be able to look up more information about the rotations I'm assigned to before going into them.  Although maybe that would be a bad idea and give me nightmares.  Hard to tell.

Kanato is about my height, with long black hair which he catches up in a ponytail, and he comes across as unfussed with a mild-mannered efficiency that turns mountains into molehills.  I kept wondering where I'd heard his voice until I recognised it as the person who'd first spoken to Ruuel from Fourth when we returned from my 'excursion', just sounding considerably less surprised.  He's not quite as correct as Zan, but all sensible and by-the-book, which kept me feeling less embarrassed than I might otherwise have been.

Test Room 2 is built for testing the high impact talents, divided into two by a massive amount of shielding, with the larger side full of angled walls of metal – targets – and the rest of Eighth Squad waiting on the 'safe' side of the shielding.  Two girls and another three guys, all polite and professional, with an edge of underlying excitement.  Kanato introduced them in the order they were standing: "Henaz, Kade, Trouban, Bryze, Hasen.  We'll do a complete run of each skill set per person, starting with Hasen.  Remember your instructions regarding contact.  Anyone who fails to keep to the restrictions will spend the rest of the day on a training run."

Hasen was a tiny, bird-like girl with soft black hair cut really close to her skull, gorgeous dark brown eyes and darker skin than most Tarens.  She stood before a hatchway which was the only opening to the other part of the test chamber and did the whole 'current strength' base level test first.  Her primary talent is Electricity, and she shot a fat bolt of it at a target a third of the way down the long length of the test chamber.  It wasn't like Lohn's Light bolts, which are short bullets, but a literal lightning bolt, stretching all the way to the target.  It left her breathing deeply, and there was a sharp ozone scent in the air and if it wasn't for my uniform I think the hair on my arms would have been standing on end.  The target made a thooming noise, and I watched through the thick, distorting viewport as some residual lightning played around the metal wall.  There was an afterimage of it across my eyes.